let's close with c.i.'s 'Iraq snapshot:'
A French TV anchor confronted John Kerry over whether U.S. condemnations of Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s bloody and baseless invasion of Ukraine come as hypocritical in light of the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Kerry, who serves as the U.S. special presidential envoy for climate and was in Paris for a climate summit hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron, appeared for an interview with veteran journalist Darius Rochebin on French news channel LCI Sunday night. They discussed Kerry’s work to combat climate change and the Russian war against Ukraine, which prompted Rochebin to bring up recent criticism of President George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq in 2003 from countries in South America.
“We have to judge Putin for crimes of aggression, of course. But you, the Americans, you committed the crime of aggression in Iraq,” Rochebin said. “These countries of the Global South say, should we judge George Bush? Why isn’t Bush judged in the same way?”
“No,” Kerry shot back.
“Why?” Rochebin asked.
“Because there’s never even been a direct process or accusation or anything with respect to President Bush himself,” Kerry said. “Have there been abuses in the course of that war, yes.”
Kerry, the U.S. presidential envoy for climate issues, replied: "No, no, no... Well, we didn’t know it was a lie at the time. You know the evidence that was produced, people didn't know that it was a lie. So no, again, I think, you’re stretching something. That’s not constructive."
"But he lied," the French journalist said about President George W. Bush. "He lied, he lied."
"Sir, I’m not going to re-debate the Iraq war with you here right now," Kerry said. "We spent a lot of time doing that. I opposed to going in, I thought it was the wrong thing to do. But we gave the president the power, regrettably, in the Congress, based on the lie. And when we knew it was a lie, people stood up and did the right thing."
Anti-trans campaigners seek to create a blanket of repression. Because the recent wave of anti-trans laws was not triggered by a landmark event like the rush of anti-abortion laws enacted in the wake of the Dobbs decision, this new reality has crept up on the country. Major media outlets have struggled to keep up with which laws have been passed in which states. With the exception, perhaps, of the trans people who find themselves in the cross hairs of these new laws, almost no one saw it coming.
The geography of gender panic illuminates the right wing’s stranglehold on a large swath of the United States. As of June 1, 24 states, including Texas, Florida, Georgia, and Arizona, account for almost all of the recent explosion of anti-trans legislation. More than 140 million people—42 percent of the US population—live in these states. All but Arizona and Georgia cast their electoral votes for Donald Trump in both 2016 and 2020, and of the states that voted for Trump twice, all but North Carolina, Ohio, and Alaska have binged on anti-trans laws (though North Carolina passed the nation’s first bathroom ban in 2016, which it later gave up after public pressure and business boycotts, and Ohio banned trans athletes from school sports).
As a comparison, the Guttmacher Institute counts 26 states where abortion is now banned or significantly restricted—a nearly identical list. With the passage of a handful of new laws or court decisions, the overlap may soon be complete. Laws attacking “critical race theory,” which also came on suddenly and are now widespread, have less of a complete overlap because such resolutions often arise in local school boards rather than in state legislatures. Nonetheless, according to a report from the UCLA Law School’s Critical Race Studies program, anti-CRT laws now affect 22 million public school students, almost half the nation’s total.
Given the avalanche of anti-trans legislation, it might be surprising to learn that the bulk of Americans are turned off by the extremism and cruelty of these laws. According to Roll Call, recent polling found that 64 percent of Americans believe that the sudden onset of anti-trans bills this year amounts to “too much legislation,” with politicians “playing political theater and using these bills as a wedge issue.” On youth access to gender-affirming medical care, an NPR/Ipsos poll found that 47 percent of Americans oppose restrictions while 31 percent support them, with 21 percent declining to answer. On allowing trans girls to compete in girls’ sports, however, the same survey found that 63 percent oppose. A Pew survey from June 2022 found that the number of people who think American society has gone too far in accepting trans people (38 percent) is roughly equal to the number who think it hasn’t gone far enough (36 percent).
When in fact, it is THE NEW YORK TIMES that has repeatedly been behind on the science as anyone knowledgeable about science was aware. Yes, there was the AIDS crisis and their attacks on gays and ignorance on science. But even something like extinction level events -- check the archives of the paper -- they got that wrong as well. Despite being known for their science section of the paper, they repeatedly fail on that topic.
Despite its massive impact, there is a temptation to dismiss the anti-trans campaign as merely another battle confined to the domain of cultural politics. Some on the liberal left agree that the cruelty is unconscionable but believe that the underlying problem is less significant than questions of economic redistribution. But the flood of anti-trans, anti-abortion, and anti-CRT laws is much more than a distraction from economically regressive legislation. Instead, the attacks on women, people of color, and trans people work hand-in-glove with attacks on the social institutions that we all depend on.
The inseparable nature of attacks on trans people and on our democratic institutions can be seen in the debates over public schools. The anti-trans campaign is a bonanza for groups engaged in a war against public education, which has long been a major target for the right wing, in spite of the fact that public education has support even in some deeply conservative states.
Painting schools as dens of “woke indoctrination,” as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis put it, facilitates disinvestment, which has direct material consequences. Of the 23 states most actively targeting trans youth and their families, the Education Law Center gave 16 grades of either an F or a D for their per-pupil funding level relative to the national average. In effect, however, there is a sectarian carve-out: Religious schools are often shielded from policies that starve public schools. A report issued in September 2022 estimated that by the end of that school year, Florida would shift an estimated 10 percent of its education budget from public to private schools. Most of the schools receiving those funds are religious and lack accreditation. In Tennessee, Governor Bill Lee has plans to start dozens of conservative charter schools by partnering with the K-12 school management arm of Hillsdale College, a Christian school in Michigan that DeSantis wants to use as a model for a public liberal arts college in his state.
In fact, there is a growing nationwide movement to reallocate public funds to private schools, including many religious schools using the same rhetoric of “parental freedom” that the anti-trans campaigns deploy. The Supreme Court opened the door for it, especially with its decision in 2021 in Carson v. Makin, which struck down a restriction on public tuition assistance funds going to religious schools. Although billions of dollars are at stake, the shifts in funding have gotten far less attention than anti-trans bills and the attacks on CRT and school libraries. The right wing is building a potentially massive edifice of religious, pro-market, and highly profitable education institutions in the same states where anti-trans hysteria has taken root, but the two issues are rarely discussed together.
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